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Saturday, September 10, 2022
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Thirty-Six Summary and Practice
Quest for the Grail
September 4–September 10, 2022
Sunday
Healthy religion teaches us how to see, how to see more clearly, and how to see things all the way through. —Richard Rohr
Monday
The young knight is the seeker in each of us, yearning for the Grail [DM team: the soul, our True Selves]. The Grail offers the capacity for renewal, forgiveness, and transformation. It also is within us. —Carol Pearson
Tuesday
By asking “Whom does my soul serve?” we learn to turn our attention to the deeper purposes of what we do. We enlarge our vision of what’s possible and gradually learn to root our actions in soul. —Bill Plotkin
Wednesday
We sense more and more that Someone Else is for us, more than we are for ourselves. All we can do is get out of the way. We realize that this is a radically benevolent universe, and it is on our side. —Richard Rohr
Thursday
After the Grail experience, the ordinary forever becomes extraordinary. God is both perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed in everything. —Richard Rohr
Friday
Once we have learned the truth of the Grail, of love, we cannot believe the world of power is adequate or a correct response to reality. The heroic journey unites power and love. —Richard Rohr
Week Thirty-Six Practice
An Invitation to Quest
This week’s Daily Meditations on the quest for the Holy Grail invite us into the realm of archetype, myth, and journey. Author and scholar Jean Houston has thought a great deal about these topics, and offers questions for reflection on how we have, or have not, responded to the adventurous questions of our soul:
Once you answer the call to a larger life, there is no turning back. Indeed, each of us might usefully consider where we find ourselves right now on the cycle of our own particular journeys. Have you heard a call to the larger life? Have you refused it, and if so, why? Have you accepted the call but then met with monsters of recalcitrance who refused to let you pass across the threshold to your own deeper capacities and possible life? Did you finally outwit these monsters and get across? Are you caught in the belly of the whale through despair, depression, or just plain sloth? Have unusual allies or helpers shown up? A telephone call at the right time? A book falling open at an important passage? Do you find yourself in the midst of the road of trials, and if so, do you experience it as full of adventures or as just one damn crisis after another? Is there awaiting you a sacred marriage or a transformational friendship? Do you feel the yearning for the inner beloved of the soul? Are you seeking atonement or attunement with your father or mother . . .? Are you finding a boon, an insight, a project that may bring some healthy solution to your own and the world’s problems? . . . Or perhaps you find yourself, like the rest of us, in several different stages of the journey at the same time.
Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.
Jean Houston, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 92–93.
Image credit: Katrina Lillian Sorrentino, Entelechy 1, 2 & 3 (details), 2022, photographs, Spain, used with permission. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.
This week’s images by Katrina Lillian Sorrentino appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.
Image inspiration: Entelechy: the seeded, coded essence that contains both patterns and possibilities for your life. Ever since I left my Christian marriage, I wanted to do the Camino, a pilgrimage that people from all over the world make to St. James’ tomb in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. In May, I walked it as a ritual in order to shed a previous version of Self and embody a truer one. I walked a total of 333 miles in order to capture entelechy through the photograph. This series is a relic of a ritual that carried me further into being. —Katrina Lillian Sorrentino
Explore Further. . .
Listen to Cole Arthur Riley speak about “Exploring the Power of Story” on the CAC podcast The Cosmic We.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.
Prayer For Our Community
God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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